MaxQuest

Tbh I haven't checked shifter yet. But yes, I would expect animal forms to deal more damage, partially because they are melee, and partially because fury gets also bonuses to elem spells. Compared to regular weapons though, fury auto-attack dps could be buffed a tiny bit.

Usually I'd say ciphers and late-game wizards. But in the current stage of beta... just dunno. Perhaps Fury, because of the new form (which is ranged btw) and their teleport ability. - Devout - Berserker and Hellwalker (haven't tried Shattered Pillar yet) - Soul Blade - but only if taken for the passives in a martial multi-class build, where all the focus is going into Annihilation - Goldpact - the loss of aura hits hard - Darcozzi Paladini - flame shield is too weak - Trickster - can he even make it into an optimal build? There should be another penalty, unrelated to dps. - Black Jacket - you lose constant recovery and get quick switch which is currently not worth it - Fury - I actually like Fury, their form and bonuses, but no access to restoration spells hurts, as healing is really important in Deadfire; increasing elemental claws damage, or +duration on kill could probably balance it out - Mage Slayer - can leave without scrolls... but potions and shorter buffs duration is a big hit Ex-vancian classes and cipher casters, especially if they are built as debilitators. Long casting durations, unreliable hard cc (no-graze, resistance downgrades), might being multiplicative bonus (this hits single-class cc ciphers with low might) are the main reasons while casting is so weak right now. Dislike: - long cast times, duh. I'm ok if there are some very slows spells like high-dmg Implossion, or if there is some sort of Pyroclasm that is same Fireball but x2 the duration / x3 the damage; but majority of already existing spells were pretty fine. - no grazes when casting or using abilities. I'm fine with auto-attacks being unable to graze... - lack of class-specific counter-resistance talents, e.g. Mental Overwhelming - negates the resistance to Intellect and Resolve afflictions. Precise Affliction - negates the resistance to Dexterity and Perception afflictions. Something like that.

Base focus gain was also reduced from 0.35 to 0.25 btw. The duration of some cipher powers is also affected by power level. @power level = 3, cipher gets: > +10% to duration of Tenuous Grasp and Whisper of Treason > +5% to duration of Mental Binding @power level = 5, cipher gets: > +20% to duration of Tenuous Grasp and Whisper of Treason > +15% to duration of Mental Binding > +5% to duration of Body Atonement This increase stacks multiplicatively with INT bonus. But still, it feels like power level affecting the duration of spells belongs to the old multiclass system; as currently cc-oriented characters are too weak in the early-mid game.

Well, as long as the information is displayed by the game (and is complete and not faulty) I see no problem in figuring things out, including the answers on the mentioned "should I attack with something else", "does it matter", etc. PoE1 had it's percs when it was comming to AR system. But yeah, I know that Josh wanted to migrate to percentual damage reduction. Even in PoE1 there are some traces of Damage Thresholds in the source code, by which one could figure out that someone had multiplicative and not additive reduction in mind. Personally I don't really mind, is it DR or AR, is it linear, gradual or all-or-nothing (although having minor sweet spots is always nice). But I'd like all weapons to be equally useful, i.e.: in one situation it's clearly better to use this dps weapon, in another this dps weapon, but overall they to have the same usefulness. So far though it's kinda obvious that if one is into melee dps, he will try to have enough Pen with a Great Sword or Quarterstaff, than having to fallback to Estocs.

So true. I'm deeply disappointed by the current state of ciphers tbh. After having 4 out of 5 MCs being ciphers in PoE1, I must say that my favorite playstyle of highdps + hard cc ciphers is pointless in Deadfire, because of: - doubled and in some cases quadrupled cast durations - lack of reliability. In PoE1 if you had acc by 15 higher than your target's defense - you could be sure that your cc will land and you will disable the enemy completely. While in Deadfire lack of grazes on spellcasts + might/dexterity/intellect resistances severely devalue hard cc powers. Now couple this with the already mentioned slow casting times, and you get to the point where you'd be better straight auto-attacking. P.S. Here are few power casting + recovery durations for reference: P.P.S. It's funny now how I was finding Ringleader cast time being simply not worth it, and as result have used it only 3 times tops across all the runs.

Someone already fixed that) I think comparing each one - would take too long. Plus some weapons seem to be more into utility department. Let's just take 3 damage oriented weapons atm, with different penetration values but same attack/recovery durations.

Estocs deal 38% less damage than Great Swords against 0 AR. So it's understandable that they can come on top in dps, only when Great Swords deal minimal damage due to penetration thresholds. Estocs (in their current iteration) could be situationally worth it under the current all-or-nothing system, as there are situations when you have to choose: [deal 70% less damage with the Great Sword], or [switch to Estoc and deal only 38% less damage instead]. Under the new gradual system, base values for weapons would have to be revised. But in order to do so, lets list the weapons and their effects first Here's a spreadsheet I started. Feel free to add missing stuff, as it's faster together. It's actually a bit harder to balance =) Imagine there are [high damage, low pen] and [low damage, high pen] weapons. In this game you can get +4 PEN buff, + PEN talents, and also lower enemy AR by 4. And if you can achieve final PEN >= enemy AR with a [high damage, low pen] weapon for majority of encounters, then it becomes strictly better. That's also the reason behind of dealing extra damage when you have penetration overflow. But yeah, 'harder to balance' does not mean impossible) Understood that. But have to mention that the first quoted sentence makes it harder to arrive to two well balanced ends of the spectrum. Atm estocs are only worth it in a very tiny PEN-AR window. As Dr. Hieronymous Alloy noticed specifically when you are at -2,-3,-4 or -5 deficit. That's an interval of length 4. And having any spell that increases your PEN or decreases enemy AR by 4, rules Estocs out completely, by making a Great Sword an always better solution. And ss you can see in the comments, this was also mentioned by KDubya, and Gromnir (if I understood him right, although in his case I'm never sure) Now I must say that, it's still possible to make high pen weapons worthy (i.e. equally viable), while not having bonus damage above 100%. But this would require shifting the resting point. Under the current system you always wanted to have PEN higher than AR and deal 100% of damage. What I am thinking is shifting this thing to the left. Where it's ok/viable/or even optimal to have lower PEN with some weapons and deal 70-80% damage. While high pen weapons would be able to push you up to 100%. Now the question is: v1. do we want [high dmg, low pen] and [low dmg, high pen] weapons deal approximately the same final damage vs any target? For example: Great Sword has 40% higher base damage but only 70% of damage goes through (against low armored target); vs estoc that has 100% of damage going through. 1.4 * 0.7 ~= 1; or another example: Great Sword has only 40% going through high AR; while estoc has 55% going through: 1.4 * 0.4 = 0.56 ~= 0.55 v2. or we want [high dmg, low pen] to be effective vs one group of enemies; and [low dmg, high pen] weapons effective vs other group of enemies?

Thanks aartz! You're the man)

Interesting. I am trying to figure out what would be the perfect PEN thresholds that would satisfy a set of conditions/expectations set by the forumers. And your statement regarding "if there is no armor, penetration can't do anything" - kinda heavily affects the viability of high pen weapons. I'd like to clarify: - you expect two similar attacks against naked character, but one with quite higher PEN, deal same damage? - (same thing rephrased) you are against dealing bonus damage with stuff like estocs and stilletos when your PEN is much higher than target's AR?

Could you share the console command? I have re-checked the wiki and the finds thread to no avail)

Kind of weird reason to like/not, buy/not a game. Imho, there can be: - a good game with classes - a good game with classless system - a bad game with classes - a bad game with classless system So why deprive yourself from the first option? =) As for classes vs classless in general... I want to believe there can be someday a classless system, deep and balanced, where classes (or rather archetypes) are emerging by themselves because of power-building sweet spots. As for which one the player will choose - will depend not on character creation or favorite-of-the-month, but his own preference and playstyle. But until we are there - I'm perfectly fine with having classes. And even more with Kaedrin pack) Loved the amount of builds you can come up with in NWN2. I liked many things about NWN2... except the Isaac's Greater Missile Storm and AB being king though.

Now that's nice) And rather smart: instead of trying to guess the right PEN thresholds that would suit community, let the community figure them out by themselves. This, coupled with the adjusted attack/recovery durations for spells and 1h weapons gonna be a good step forward in finding the "combat just feels right" grail. P.S. It would be great if new patch also included some sort of target dummies. Could be even simple spores (stationary, with low attack, high hp and without abilities). If we could spawn them via console, it would ease testing stuff.

Having stats attached to a race and country, was giving possibility to have a 2 MIG character - i.e. if you didn't need MIG, you could get a +1 to a different stat. And who doesn't love free attributes? And to a bit lesser degree of impact ,it allowed you to get 20 in other stat of your choice. Now speaking of backgrounds... it allowed you to select a bonus to the skills you really need. And it was kinda important, because going from 9 mechanics to 10 would normally require you 10 skill points. So if you are intending to max mech, selecting difter, laborer or scientisc could economize you up to 9 skill points which could be invested elsewhere.

Ye, it takes the pros of both approaches (5% gradual, and semi-gradual with bumps), but at the expense of complexity. It might be hard to remember at what thresholds exactly these bumps are located. Sweet) So everybody can play around with the thresholds, arrive to the right feel and share it. We could even make a straw poll latter or something. Hey, do you think you could code a system like MaxQuest proposed in this thread? It would be nice to give it a try. It doesn't look like it's possible atm. There are 3 thresholds, and I guess all are multiplicative only. But it gonna be possible under the new system (which adds support for flat steps). I think it will look something like this: Btw, am looking at Josh's values and imho it's already a solid improvement over the current state. It's no longer all-or-nothing, but ye it's still more abrupt than the posted suggestions. There is also a question: do we want to deal bonus damage to very high AR creatures, provided that our PEN is even higher? For reference: under the current system we would need 40 PEN vs 20 AR targets, in order to get the x1.3 multiplier.

Yes. They are correct for the current state of the beta. But there is something weird about graze calculation, as it just doesn't fit in. Plus I have quoted-out the lash part, as we don't know how exactly their damage is intended to get calculated in Deadfire yet. Yes There is a different variable for that (iirc it's called durationCritMult or something like that). But it's current value is also 1.25 Grazes are weird atm. Welp, give it time

Are you referring to: 45.7 * 1.3 != 51.3 ? (image) The Might bonus is 0.15 in that case. But yes, you seem to have spotted the problem. - the system first computes the regular damage, which is 45.7. - then it checks for PEN-AR thresholds, and multiplies the damage by 1.3. Yet the final value is x1.158 lower than it should, as if 45.7 was divided by might before multiplying by 1.3 + some rounding error.

Understood. So Might is basically applied multiplicatively now. And yeah, UI could display it like that: Before/After: It's a quite important decision as it affects all power builds stat distributions. In PoE1, might coefficient, graze malus (-0.5) and crit bonus (+0.5) all were applied additively. So you could have high might and deal decent damage even on grazes (e.g. paladin with Sacred Immolation); or you could make a cc-oriented character with low might, but who would still deal decent damage because he crits a lot (e.g. low-mig cipher), or has other high damage coefficients (e.g. sneak attack + deathblows). On the other hand the new system allows going for "let the stars align" spikes, i.e. when a swing made by high-mig character crits and also benefits from x1.3 bonus from PEN minus AR difference, resulting in a huge total multiplier. The fact that the base CritDamageMult is decreased to 1.25 now, kinda points that this thing was noted =) Tbh I am unsure which is the best approach here atm. The PoE1 feels a bit strange at start, but it really grows on you over time, when you understand there are different (almost equally) viable ways to arrive to high dps (and you have to evaluate this on per-build basis). On the other hand Deadfire multiplication could feel more natural because Might has always an equally proportional effect. I remember seeing something like this during recovery duration calculation in PoE1 =) It's indeed weird. It looks like an arithmetical puzzle where you have to put the missing signs. But even with provided explanation I can't arrive to the already mentioned 18.5. That is indeed a bug that I'll file. That's great) And there is another related problem to that x1.3 multiplier: image Specifically: 45.7 * 1.3 != 51.3 That character was indeed a Soulblade. Soulblade/Fury to be precise. But are you sure about that thing? I have re-checked Soulblade subclass description and it's not mentioned anywhere. Plus I've made a pure cipher, and he gets the same bonuses. Something's wrong here tbh. Not to mention that soulblade's starting focus seems to jiggle by +/-5; and that a x/cipher can learn both Bitting and Draining Whips (image1, image2), while other ciphers can select only one. But that's for a separate bug report. Will fill it later, once I test more.

Ouch I have forgot about this class completely. * muttering something under his breath * There were literally that much multi-class builds I wanted to make with them so far: [none] Because of their current abilities and lack of Twinned Arrows talent. Have edited my previous reply (and added ranger). I was referring to weapon style talents exclusively =) As for Gunner and Marskman, ye, I'd like them to be accessible to everyone. I have a feeling that summoned weapons should be better than usual ones, by a margin great enough to compensate.

The thing is: - TwoWeapon Style might be essential in achieving zero recovery (provided it's still possible in Deadfire). - 1H&Shield Style can be very decent on a pure chanter, wizard or priest offtank. Also think of something like goldpact/rogue built around riposte. - TwoHanded Style is really important for cc-oriented/low-might ciphers. Atm to be "very very good in handling weapons" you indeed have to dip into fighter. But sometimes you don't need it, you just want "to be good enough" and select another second class. E.g. not monk/fighter but monk/barb,.. with TwoWeapon Style. I've seen a few related suggestions, and the most I liked are: v1. - have these weapon style talents given to all classes - while fighters get some sort of Greater Specialization starting from power level 4/5. v2. - have these weapon style talents distributed around martial classes: - paladin: can get access to TwoHanded and 1H&Shield styles - rogue: TwoWeapon and OneHanded - monk: TwoWeapon - cipher: TwoHanded; and TwoWeapon (but at power level 5+) - barbarian: TwoWeapon and TwoHanded - ranger: TwoWeapon and TwoHanded - fighter: all four ... additionally there could be Ranged Weapon Style... either as ranger exclusive, or ranger + fighter + rogue + (arguably) cipher.

Also note the lash damage. 29.2 is 60% of 48.7. So it seems to be unaffected by penetration's x1.3 multiplier. Or the system actually checks corrode AR, but it was really high?

Skald drooling in the corner...)

I am looking at that Damage calculation, and don't quite get how the system has arrived to the final number of 48.7: 22.9 * (1 + 0.5 + 0.18 + 0.15 + 0.15) = 22.9 * 1.98 = 45.342 Also, iirc crit modifier is references as critDamageMult in the game databundle and has the value of 1.25...(gonna double check it) But even then: 22.9 * 1.25 * (1 + 0.18 + 0.15 + 0.15)) = 22.9 * 1.85 = 42.365 On a related note: how do you even get 18.5 here: image

Flickering. Not really bugs, but rather... little stuff that devs implemented, but didn't think about consequences. E.g: - Galactic Civilizations 1: you could threaten a minor race to pay you tribute. But not all instantly rather each turn for 50 turns. Now the game didn't check if they CAN pay all amount, but only if they have enough to pay the first transaction. So you could declare war 50 turns in a row, and each time negotiate peace for a huge total amount of money that was stacking. And somehow a small minor planet was power-housing a huge galactic empire. - Galactic Civilizations 2: you could get a technology that would give you 10% of total war profits in the galaxy. So first you were bribing (with huge amounts of money) all civilizations to declare war to each other... and then reaping astronomical profits. You basically built nothing at that point any longer. Everything was rush / instant-buy. - World of Warcraft: I have checked few private servers out of nostalgia few years ago. I remember one was pretty decent, but there was a critical bug which no one noticed as I understood for over a year! The attack speed bonuses were added... via spd * (1 - bonuses), rather than via spd / (1 + bonuses), and majority were saying that haste sucks,... you understand now that if you stacked enough, attack duration of a swing could get close to zero? skyrocketing to the moon the auto-attack dps? =)

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/msty.gif

Yeah, usually I try to experience the first playthrough without looking for metaknowledge. But in case of PoE1 there were a few immersion-breaking things for me, so... I've found pleasure in trying to come up with an OP and time-efficient party) It's enough for just one player to post the list ;D I know it's the incorrect usage as optimal is already superlative. But just can't think of it as such) We had a professor that was explaining us the Bisection method, and he was permanently repeating that there is a real solution (like x = 0.245645645645646...) and an optimal solution (when we know the approximate value and the error range is less than a predefined epsilon). And it's optimal because we got the value at a suiting precision, without wasting resources for computation of remaining part that we would round anyway. So it's kinda sticked from there. Nowadays, calling something optimal I mean that is not farther from ideal by +/- 10%, and most optimal by uhh, let's say +/- 1%